The Government has issued Decree 225/2025/ND-CP (Decree 225), establishing a specific and mandatory roadmap for selecting investors online for projects that involve land use.

The decree took effects on August 15, 2025.

This new regulation is expected to enhance transparency, competition, and efficiency in the bidding process, while also simplifying procedures for businesses.

Decree 225 amends and supplements several detailed regulations for implementing the Law on Bidding, with a primary focus on digitizing the investor selection process on the National Bidding Network System.

Under the new regulations, the online selection of investors will be implemented according to a specific timeline:

From July 1, 2026, all domestic "invitations for expressions of interest" for investment projects must be conducted online via the National Bidding Network System.

From January 1, 2027, the online selection of investors will become mandatory for land-use investment projects using domestic open and limited bidding formats (applicable to both one-stage, one-envelope and one-stage, two-envelope methods).

The online investor selection process regulated by Decree 225 is not applicable to projects that fall under international bidding. However, all information related to the investor selection process for these projects must still be fully published on the System as required by the 2023 Law on Bidding.

Decree 225 also details and standardizes the entire online investor selection procedure to ensure consistency and transparency.